GF Smith have been fine-paper merchants since 1885, best known for a coloured range with more shades than most people knew paper came in. Our work with them is a material collaboration rather than a single knife.
The idea came from seeing paper compressed into solid objects and deciding to work out how to do it ourselves. Done properly, compressed paper is a genuinely durable handle material, and because it starts as coloured sheets, it opens up patterns you cannot get any other way.
It is also, frankly, a pain to make. The sideways pattern, where the layers run at ninety degrees to the blade, takes ninety-six one-centimetre strips of A4, stacked in the right order. Cast the handle, find one strip out of sequence, and you start again.
We keep coming back to it anyway. It runs through other work too, including the Jasmine Collection, where GF Smith paper is layered with walnut on some of the handles.
What GF Smith made possible was colour and pattern in a handle, drawn from paper, and a material we have never quite been able to leave alone.
In collaboration with GF Smith.